


Front Window

by baseballchica03



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Claudia is neither lazy nor stupid, Gen, Learning Disabilities, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 09:48:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baseballchica03/pseuds/baseballchica03
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claudia celebrates a professional milestone and reminisces about how she got there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Front Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plusminus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plusminus/gifts).



Claudia walked down the corridor for the third time in an hour, admiring the newly installed letters etched on the front window. She snapped a picture with her cell phone and sent off a quick text to her sister.

There was a time when Claudia (and pretty much everyone else in her family) doubted she’d even make it to college, much less end up a partner at an architecture firm, of all things. That all changed the evening Janine came bursting into her bedroom with a thick stack of photocopied pages in her hand, going on about Morbidda Destiny and learning disability diagnosis and the biowhatever course she was taking at the college that summer.

After a series of consultations with Janine’s professor, Claudia was diagnosed with dyscalculia and dyslexia. It turned out that having both learning disabilities as the same time threw off the results of the tests her guidance counselor at Stoneybrook Elementary had conducted. Her parents were able to file all the appropriate paperwork with the district before school started again in the fall, thanks to Janine’s eye for detail. High school wasn’t any easier than middle school had been, as Claudia had secretly hoped it would be. But once she found the support she needed, she didn’t hate school nearly as much. She even started to actually enjoy some of her classes other than art. 

Mallory Pike was the first person to suggest that Claudia think about architecture. They had both stepped out for air during one of Kristy’s mandatory BSC Christmas extravaganzas over winter break her junior year, and Claudia found herself talking about how uncertain she was about college, the future, just about everything. Mal said her teachers handled math differently at Riverbend than they did in Stoneybrook – “interdisciplinary studies” she had called it - and suggested that Claud might channel some of her creative talents into designing buildings. She laughed out loud at the idea at first, but as the days passed, she just couldn’t seem to ignore it. When she mentioned it in a letter to McKenzie Clarke, the response from her former teacher was quick and enthusiastic. 

And so Claudia was off on a path she never expected but found exhilarating: studying architecture at the New School, a semester abroad in Tokyo, camping out on Stacey’s couch through a year of unpaid internships, selling sketches to make ends meet, volunteering at the YMCA to tutor students with learning disabilities. Her creativity and willingness to take chances got the firm out of a jam with an adaptive reuse project they’d been stuck on and won her a real, live entry-level position with the firm.

Many projects, flashes of inspiration, long hours at the office, and a Whitney Young award later, her name was on the front window. Claudia Kishi, professional architect– partner, no less! She knew that Janine was right, that she had worked hard for everything she’d achieved. But she couldn’t help but wonder how things could have been so different if just a few things had gone wrong. 

Her phone buzzed in her hand, interrupting her train of thought. It was Stacey, wanting to know where they were going out to celebrate. Claudia smiled. No use worrying about what could have been, especially when what was turned out so awesome. Life was pretty sweet. 

**Author's Note:**

> Of course Janine wasn’t talking about the Brewers’ neighbor, Mrs. Porter, when she got so excited about her biopsychiatry homework. The term Claudia mis-remembers is _comorbidity_ , or the presence of multiple learning disabilities simultaneously. 
> 
> I'm not a scientist, but some of the literature I came across while researching this fic suggests that dyscalculia and dyslexia are caused by two entirely different types of cognitive impairments. If Claudia's dyscalculia is dominant and the dyslexia is less severe, it seemed a reasonable enough explanation that it would have thrown off the testing process. More reasonable than the SES/SMS staff being as entirely incompetent at it otherwise seems, anyway. :)


End file.
